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You probably just heard that 36% of Americans haven’t saved a penny for retirement, according to a new Bankrate.com survey. (And 26% of 50- to 64-year-olds haven’t put away any money for it either.)

I suspect that they — and, frankly, most of the rest of us — could use some advice to get our retirement planning on track. The question is: Where should we get it and how good would it be?

A fascinating new study has some answers to those questions.

For Inside Retirement Income Advice 2014: At Retirement Focus, the Rye, N.Y. financial research firm Hearts & Wallets analyzed advice from 29 financial advisory firms, online calculators and employee retirement plans. The point wasn’t to select particular companies or tools as best, but to see how helpful their brands were during their "experiences" offering advice.

“When we ask people in focus groups where they think financial firms are on service quality and product quality, many draw question marks,” said Laura Varas, co-founder of Hearts & Wallets. “They have no perception.”

For part of the study, its fifth, Hearts & Wallets created the hypothetical pre-retiree couple George and Nina Banks, 64 and 56 (the names of the parents of the bride in the film, Father of the Bride) and then sought advice for them. “We wanted to see if a couple was getting advice, what kind of advice would they get,” said Varas, a former Fidelity exec.

The study's results were eye-opening and can be quite useful for people in their 50s and 60s deciding where to get retirement-planning advice.

Hearts & Wallet broke into four categories the firms and tools it reviewed: Prelude to a Sale (typically calculators designed to get you to hire the firm behind them); Self-Directed /Media (calculators for DIY'ers); In-Plan (for participants in 401(k)-type plans) and Full-Service (firms that offer access to financial professionals, including the new “robo-advisers”).

1. Overall, the quality of the retirement-planning advice and the ease of using the tools has improved. In the past, the advisers and tools focused on “The Number” and whether you’d have enough money in retirement. Now, they’ve moved to outlining actions to improve your overall chance of success. Two years ago, only 4% of the firms helped pre-retirees optimize their retirement income; this year, 21% did (still not all that impressive, though). And more firms now help people make decisions about when to stop working than in previous surveys.

2. Many firms are doing a better job offering retirement advice to couples rather than just to one individual in a couple. An impressive 83% of the experiences Hearts & Wallets analyzed were for couples, up from 61% in 2012.

3. The range of the results was all over the map. While 32& predicted the Banks would fail to achieve their goals based on their retirement income sources ($1.6 million of investable assets, a pension and Social Security; no mortgage), 60% forcasted success and 8% had no prediction.

Investment recommendations varied greatly, too. One adviser told the Banks they should have 60% in equities; another said 12%. The average: 45%. The Social Security estimates for the first year George Banks could claim benefits ranged from $22,236 to $41,405.